The Driven Environment in 2015

Introduction

The Fall 2004 Johnson Controls Funded Educational Project asked students from Transportation Design, Product Design, Environmental Design, Graphic Design, and Film departments to examine the long-range future of the interface between the vehicle and its occupants. The demographic focus for each design team encompassed end users with impaired personal mobility due to conditions including illness, age, and accident. The design focus on “interactive experience” included the ability to appropriately access and distribute information in order to create a safe, comfortable and entertaining automotive environment.

Partners in the project included several scholars and expert practitioners in the fields of Gerontology and Disability, who were essential to the in-depth research process: Steve Rosenthal of Ability First, Pasadena; Gwen Uman of Vital Research; Diane Carstens of Gerontological Services; and Maria Henke and Victor Regnier, FAIA, of the Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Equally invaluable were the firsthand perspectives and interviews granted by Robert Gorski, a wheelchair user who is also the City of Pasadena’s Accessibility/Disability coordinator, and by members of the Los Angeles-based wheelchair basketball team, Fast Breakin’ Lakers.

The work of The Driven Environment 2015 earned ArtCenter the Expanding Possibilities Award, from Ability First, in 2005.

Book

The Driven Environment in 2015

This book documents concepts in enhanced mobility design as developed in the Johnson Controls-sponsored “Driven Environment in 2015” studio.